Warm & Healing

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.

—Ephesians 5:8–10

Some years ago, at the end of a green and windy June, we had one of those nights that I’m still thinking about. It was a scheduling nightmare, a plan that any sane person would have abandoned. But one of the cracked-up and crazy parts of me is the part that absolutely will not call off party plans. That Sunday night at the lake, our dinner guests were tired, coming bedraggled and late from all corners. Most of them had never met. No matter, I said.

We were tired, staring at unfamiliar faces, trying to remember names and make conversation. And then, just like it always does, food and wine and time around the table braided us together, and we started telling stories and jokes, laughter bubbling through.

That night was right in the middle of the hardest season Aaron and I had yet experienced, a long stretch of uncertainty and fear. It was an oasis, a port in the storm, a moment of levity and connection in the middle of a season that felt distinctly lonely and tangled. In a season of darkness, it was a burning flame, warm and healing.